Charges have been dropped against a Georgetown University student from Tarrant County accused of assaulting a fellow student in September while yelling anti-gay epithets, according to news reports.
Phillip Anderton Cooney, then 19, was charged with a hate crime after the victim in the case identified his alleged attacker using the social networking site Facebook.
The victim, a 22-year-old male, said he was walking a few blocks from the GU campus in the early morning hours of Sept. 9 when Cooney and another man began following him. The victim said Cooney called him a "faggot" before tackling him and punching him in the head and face. The victim was treated and released at a local hospital.
The Washington Blade reported this week that the U.S. Attorney’s Office has dropped its case against Cooney, citing insufficient evidence. The incident was one of several that prompted Georgetown officials to establish a gay resource center on campus.
Cooney, a sophomore from Southlake, is the son of Phillip Anderton Cooney, President Bush’s former chief of staff to the President’s Council on Environmental Quality.
The senior Cooney resigned in 2005 to become an ExxonMobil lobbyist after it was learned that he had altered reports to cast doubt on the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming, according to reports.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition April 25, 2008.